Category Archives: Gardening Ideas

You’ve probably heard about Colony Collapse Disease in beehives, but did you know that we’ve also lost half of all songbird species in the U. S. in the last 50 years? You can help reverse these trends! Sage Advice will be teaching a class on the morning of July 14th at The Morton Arboretum on […]

We had a great class at the Morton Arboretum last Friday, and while we were planning front gardens for all 20 students, we got into talking about soil testing. Everyone in this class has a new build or a mature landscape that has been long in need of a spruce up! Both of these scenarios […]

Planting a vegetable garden or a row of summer flowers gives kids even as young as 4 or 5 the chance to dig in the dirt, learn where food comes from and feel comfortable outdoors. To help our kids avoid having Nature Deficit Disorder, a documented problem these days, it’s best to start early!

From New Terrain, a newsletter of Ball Publishing: As many as 1.8 billion additional stems of milkweed plants in North America may return imperiled Monarch butterflies to a sustainable population size, according to a recently published U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study. Habitat plants in the Monarch’s Midwestern flyway are most important. “Milkweeds in corn and […]

Winter is a great time to re-assess what you are doing to promote sustainability in the environment. Every gardener can do this, and it doesn’t need to be hard. Here are a few things to think about for next year! Do you have a rain barrel? Do you compost in your yard? Are you returning […]

A butterfly garden doesn’t necessarily look like much when first planted, but see how it emerges to a stunning display by the third season! In this garden, the outstanding orange blossoms are butterfly weed, a favorite variety of milkweed.

We had the rare privilege of visiting recently with daylily expert Ann Redmon from Manhattan Kansas. Ms. Redmon has cross-bred many daylilies in her acerage to create new varieties, and has registered four of them. Pictured here is one of her registered lilies, called “Hannah Banana.” Daylilies are great in any garden. But remember, you […]

Native plants play a special role for pollinators in providing habitat for their own life cycle. We are all most familiar with the necessity of having milkweed available to support the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly. Monarchs cannot survive without milkweed to support the caterpillar that eventually becomes a Monarch butterfly. Other insects, including […]